Private schools, or independent schools, are schools not administered by local, state, or national government, which retain the right to select their student body and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students tuition rather than with public (state) funds. In the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries the use of the term is generally restricted to primary and secondary educational levels: it is almost never used of universities or other tertiary institutions.
The secondary level includes schools offering grades 7 through 12 and grade 13. This category includes preparatory schools or “prep schools”, boarding schools and day schools. Tuition at private secondary schools varies from school to school and depends on many factors, including the location of the school, the willingness of parents to pay, peer tuitions, and the endowment. High tuition, schools claim, is used to pay higher salaries for the best teachers, and also used to provide enriched learning environments including a low student to teacher ratio, small class sizes and services such as libraries, science laboratories, and computers. Some private schools are boarding schools. Some military schools are privately owned or operated as well.
Religiously affiliated or denominational schools form a distinct category of private schools. Some such schools teach religious lessons together with the usual academic subjects to instill their particular faith’s beliefs and traditions in the students who attend. For example, The Epstein School in Atlanta, Georgia teaches conservative Judaism to its students. Others use the denomination as more of a general label to describe on what the founders based their belief, while still maintaining a fine distinction between academics and religion. They include parochial schools, a term which is often used to denote Catholic Christian schools. Other religious groups represented in the K-12 private education sector include Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and the Orthodox Christians.
Many educational alternatives, such as independent schools, are also privately financed. Private schools often avoid some state regulations.
Private education in North America covers the whole gamut of educational activity. Private schools range from pre-school to tertiary level institutions. Annual tuitions at K-12 schools range from nothing at tuition-free schools to more than $40,000 at several boarding schools.
There are 28,384 private schools in the United States, serving 6.1 million PK-12 students. Private schools account for over 25 percent of the nation’s schools and enroll about 11 percent of all students.
Most private school students (82 percent) attend religiously-affiliated schools, and most private schools are small (82 percent have fewer than 300 students).
Under the mandate of reducing the size of the state, the IMF has encouraged the privatization of schools. Such a measure was undertaken in Haiti, and an IMF report predicts that the extreme deterioration in school quality and attendance will hamper the country’s human capacity for many years to come. For example, only 8 percent of teachers in private schools (now 89 percent of all schools) have professional qualifications, compared to 47 percent in public schools. Secondary school enrollment dropped from 28 to 15 percent between 1985 and 1997. Nevertheless, the report ends with recommendations for Haiti to pursue further privatization initiatives.
Meanwhile, to make up shortfalls, school fees are often introduced, forcing parents to pull children-usually girls-from school, resulting in declining literacy rates and skills. In Ghana, the Living Standards Survey for 1992-93 found that 77 percent of street children in the capital city Accra dropped out of school because of an inability to pay fees. In sub-Saharan Africa, under explicit conditions of adjustment, education budgets were curtailed, and a “double shift system” was installed so that one teacher now does the work of two. The remaining teachers were laid off and the resulting savings to the Treasury are funneled toward interest payments on debt.
